Another Bust

In response to:

In order to conjure up an image of an Ezra Pound “desperate for power, thirsting and starving for power, no matter how demeaning the conditions for attaining it might be” (a big mouthful!) Kay Boyle tells us that in Rapallo during the 1930s Pound “had presented a bronze bust of himself to the town. There it stood in the square, larger than life, which was always what he wanted to be” [NYR, Letters, May 7].

I was intrigued by this enormous bronze bust in the town square because, though even the minutiae of Pound’s Rapallo days have been pretty well sieved through, none of his many biographers has mentioned it. An incredible omission, indeed! So I asked Rapallo friends who had lived through those days and received the not unexpected answer: of course there was no such statue. In this same letter, Kay Boyle admonishes me and Theodore Weiss to return “a little closer to reality.” If this whopping bronze bust is “reality,” I prefer non-reality, thank you.